The Bar Cart

It’s finally happened – the bar cart is here. We did an amazing (if I do say so myself) hack on an IKEA trolley, so today I’m going to take you through exactly how we did it.
We started off with the IKEA Bygel Trolley (a bargain at only £18)Looks pretty boring, right? There are lots of different hacks for this trolley on Pinterest, so we took ideas from a few different people and created something that worked for us. This is the result:Doesn’t it look so much better! We sprayed all the chrome pieces copper (to go with the copper cocktail set I got from my friend Laura for my last birthday), and covered the shelves in marble contact paper. This was the bit which I was most apprehensive about, I really wasn’t sure if it would look right, but turns out it looks frickin’ great!

We started off with a couple of coats of primer spray paint:You can get these at most DIY stores or even on Amazon. This turns the chrome to a matt grey colour which provides the base for your colour spray paint. I would suggest if you can, to do this outside. We didn’t have the option for that as our balcony is not that big, plus it was chucking it down at the time. So we taped up a couple of bin bags on the walls and went nuts with the spray paint. We did two coats per side, letting them dry for 20 minutes in between each spray. Once we’d done that we then left everything to dry completely for 24 hours.

Next up was the copper:This was the fun part as we could actually see exactly what the colour would look like from the first spray. The fumes from this were insane though, and as we were doing this in our lounge we ended up having to vacate the room, shut all the doors and open all the windows.

We did the same again and gave everything two coats per side. We then left this for a further 24 hours and once that was dry, sprayed on a top coat:It got a bit frustrating waiting 24 hours in between each go, I think you can get away with slightly less in fairness, but we left it as long as we could.

One annoying thing was that some of the paint peeled off slightly where we had everything leant against the black bag – I don’t know how we could have avoided this really as we would have needed to lean it against something regardless, even though we let everything dry in between coats. But other than that, the colour came out great and we’re super pleased with it – we even sprayed a couple of lids to go on some glass bottles for flavoured mixers and they came out great too.

Onto the shelves:Again, the contact paper can be found in most DIY stores or online. This part really was a two man job – one to hold one end of the contact paper and pull the backing off, and another to smooth out all the wrinkles with a credit card – it was actually relatively simple though once we’d gotten into a rhythm. The tricky bit came in securing the corners without it looking too messy – we tried a number of different ways and I couldn’t really tell you which worked best, it was all trial and error really, but I think we managed it okay.

The really frustrating part came when we had to put everything back together, and this seems to be the same for everyone else who’s tried it! All the legs go together fine, and the first two shelves were no trouble to screw in, but the third shelf? Oh my did we struggle. In the end it was brute force which finally secured it.

The last bit was the really fun part – decorating it!I had the copper cocktail set already, and the vintage decanter in the middle was from an antiques market. We bought the cork carafe in IKEA, and the two smaller glass bottles came from a couple of cordial drinks we also got in IKEA, and those were the lids we sprayed in copper to match. The two quirky bottles at the back on the left were from TK Maxx, I adore these, and they were only £5 each! Lastly, the white decanter at the back was another little DIY. It was originally a green coloured glass, so we bought a little can of spray paint and sprayed it white – I think it looks really effective!There’s a little drawer which sits at the top, this holds all the bits and pieces such as the jigger, bottle openers, strainers, muddlers etc.The middle shelf holds a few glasses and some limes & lemons, we tend to change this up quite often.Then at the bottom we have a wine rack and all our spirits and mixers. Jami (my flatmate) found the ice bucket in TK Maxx (we love a frozen margarita so ice is a necessity!)

You may have noticed our little Bar Menu… I think this is such a great addition and it was so simple to do – we bought a really cheap frame from Wilkos for around £5, covered the glass in chalkboard contact paper, painted the frame in what I like to call a mustard/sunshine yellow:then secured a short piece of rope on the back and voila!So so pleased with the result! I think all in all with the cost of the spray paint, contact paper and trolley we came in at around £50-£60 – pretty good going if you ask me!